Iranian transition

After eight years of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad‘s intemperate language and international mischief, Americans are eager to welcome whoever comes next, or at least to show himself as somehow different. While Amir Taheri warns against welcoming election winner Hassan Rohani as a “moderate,” the presence of favorable signals can’t be ignored — and not just because he looks a lot less menacing than Ahmadinejad did.

First, Rohani, 64, isn’t the guy the ruling clerics wanted. Second, voter turnout was down 6 million compared with the 2009 vote that reinstated Ahmadinejad. Those two facts suggest voter dissatisfaction with the status quo, as well as discouragement and suspicion of the election system. If Rohani actually has goals of his own and would like to stay in office for an extended period, he can’t ignore these two facts.

Nevertheless, Mr. Taheri, a former Iranian journalist, says portraying him as a moderate is a stretch:

Of course, Rouhani is not exactly an outsider. Yes, the media have dubbed him a “reformist” and a “moderate” — but he hasn’t offered a single proposal for reforming anything. And his record, mostly with the security services, reveals him as anything but a moderate, especially when it comes to the brutal suppression of dissent.

You’ve got to wonder what the majority of American voters were smoking in 2008 when they allowed themselves to be convinced Barack Obama somehow would be able to sweet-talk the Iranians into playing nice with their neighbors, and with us. We certainly shouldn’t allow ourselves to be fooled yet again.

There is no indication Rohani will retreat on nuclear weapons. It therefore seems almost certain that the Islamic Republic will acquire nuclear-weapons capability and probably will be able to place its warheads on rockets by the time Mr. Obama’s successor takes office in January 2016. It’s unlikely they can stopped by anything short of total war ending in regime change, and I know of no nation — certainly not this one — that is so inclined. For all the talk about an Israeli preemptive attack, I don’t think the Jewish state has the stomach for it, either. It’s possible that Israel could make a mess of the weapons-development program in Iran, but it couldn’t effect regime change.

Where does that leave us? I’d bet we’ll get a chance to test warnings by doom-sayers who predict Iran will use its weapons and put itself at risk of nuclear annihilation, all over a prophecy about the arrival of the “12th imam.” That, according to some observers, is what distinguishes the supposedly suicidal Iranian regime with the rational Soviet leaders who were constrained by the prospect of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD).